Juveniles as criminals

Should India move from reformative laws for its juveniles to penal law once again? This pertinent question has been nagging the law makers to review the law as more and more incidents of heinous crimes are committed by juveniles. It was to save the juveniles from being bracketed as criminals, the term juvenile delinquents was coined. Moving beyond mere terminology, Juvenile Justice Act 1989 was replaced by more reformative JJ Act 2000. Now again the government has decided to reject recommendations of the Parliamentary committee, that disapproved of treating juveniles, who are accused of heinous crimes, as adults. The government has decided to go ahead with the new Justice Care and Protection Bill-2014, cleared by the Cabinet in August 2014.     

The proposed changes in the new Bill are in tune with the changing times that recognise early adulthood among the juvenile. The involvement of juvenile offenders in the most heinous crimes like Nirbhaya gangrape, Shakti Mill gangrape, Guwahati rape and lynching, etc. demand that laws be redefined to reassess adulthood. Is a juvenile capable of rationalising his/her actions before the age of 18? A similar dilemma was faced by the judiciary in the UK, the gruesome murder of two-year-old Jamie Bulger in Liverpool in 1993 by two 10-year-old boys, forced the court to treat the juveniles in an adult court. The laws were changed to treat 10-17-year-olds as adults under tremendous pressure from the public. In India, around 85 per cent people, who responded to consultations on the new law, want 16-year-olds to be treated as adults under such circumstances. 

The lawmakers should not move away from their primary responsibility of providing opportunities for reform to the juvenile. After all, criminals come from a background of abject deprivation of all kinds and society cannot escape its share of responsibility. With all kinds of cuts in the budget allocation for child welfare and education, one cannot assess the repercussions it will bear on the criminalisation of youth. The government should also concentrate on well-thought of welfare schemes for educating the deprived youth.